Scientists were pretty excited when they discovered you could convert light energy directly into electricity by capturing photons in semiconductors, exciting them into “excitons” (bound electron with negative charge and hole with positive), and capturing the resultant current through electrodes. Now a group of four chemists from the University of California, Riverside, has worked out a

It’s called “singlet fission,” and by using it, we should be able to boost solar cell efficiency by as much as 30%, providing “Third Generation” solar power. The Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters published the research results in an Editor’s Choice perspective article last month.

Christopher Bardeen, the chemistry professor whose lab led the research, explains what sent him along this line of inquiry:

Our research got its launch about ten years ago when we started thinking about solar energy and what new types of photophysics this might require. Global warming concerns and energy security have made solar energy conversion an important subject from society’s point of view. More efficient solar cells would lead to wider use of this clean energy source.

“If a triplet exciton has half the energy of a singlet, then it is possible for one singlet exciton, generated by one photon, to split into two triplet excitons,” Dr. Bardeen explains. “Thus, you could have a 200% yield of excitons—and hopefully, electrons—per absorbed photon.”

Protein Modification Could Push Cellulosic Biofuel Forward Farm Futures Production of cost-efficient cellulosic biofuels has been limited by lignin, which binds tightly to the cellulose found in plants' cell walls.

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One of the inconvenient truths about fuel cells for powering automobiles—a key to the establishment of the so-called hydrogen economy—is that it is extremely costly and energy intensive to isolate hydrogen gas.

The study of a super-hydrophobic surface has led to discovery of a method for generating power from condensation. Condensing water droplets literally leap off the surface and produce an electric charge that can be harvested.

It’s time to get rid of that dehumidifier — you are just throwing awayfree energy by sucking all the moisture out of the air, according to some new research published by a team from MIT. Postdoc researchers Nenad Miljkovic and engineering professor Evelyn Wang figured out last year that water droplets jumping off a hydrophobic surface could gain an electric charge, but now they’re worked out how to capture that energy, essentially pulling power out of thin air.

The team happened upon this mechanism quite by accident. The goal when the leaping water was discovered was to design a more efficient heat transfer material for power plants. That’s not nearly as sexy as conjuring power from humidity, but Miljkovic and Wang noticed something odd when working with a super-hydrophobic surface (pictured above). The condensing water droplets sometimes spontaneously jumped away from the hydrophobic surface, which was the goal as it cools much more efficiently. They didn’t expect the water droplets to produce an electric charge in the process, and that may have significant ramifications.

It’s the natural tendency of water to flow away from a hydrophobic surface, but in turning the leaping water into a viable method of power generation, the researchers had to give it somewhere to go. To encourage the water droplets to take a leap, a hydrophilic surface was placed just above the hydrophobic one. So the water really wants to make the trip from hydrophobic to hydrophilic, and it brings a few electrons along for the ride. The charge difference between the two plates can then be used to provide power.

With USU colleagues Chris McGinty and Jason Quinn, Moody published findings from an unprecedented worldwide microalgae productivity assessment in the May 26, 2014 Edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The team's research was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy.

Despite its promise as a biofuel source, the USU investigators questioned whether "pond scum" could be a silver bullet-solution to challenges posed by fossil fuel dependence.

"Our aim wasn't to debunk existing literature, but to produce a more exhaustive, accurate and realistic assessment of the current global yield of microalgae biomass and lipids," Moody says.

With Quinn, assistant professor in USU's Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, and McGinty, associate director of USU's Remote Sensing/Geographic Information Systems Laboratory in the Department of Wildland Resources, Moody leveraged a large-scale, outdoor microalgae growth model. Using meteorological data from 4,388 global locations, the team determined the current global productivity potential of microalgae.

Algae, he says, yields about 2,500 gallons of biofuel per acre per year. In contrast, soybeans yield approximately 48 gallons; corn about 18 gallons.

"In addition, soybeans and corn require arable land that detracts from food production," Quinn says. "Microalgae can be produced in non-arable areas unsuitable for agriculture."

The researchers estimate untillable land in Brazil, Canada, China and the U.S. could be used to produce enough algal biofuel to supplement more than 30 percent of those countries' fuel consumption.

Land that is not used for food can be used to produce algae-based biofuel to meet a large fraction of the world's energy needs. But another alternative is vertical farming in urban areas, where we can create as much space as we need.

Recharge Texas A&M gets $2.2 million state grant for wind energy research San Antonio Business Journal (blog) Texas A&M University's Wind Energy Center has been awarded a $2.2 million grant from the Texas Emerging Technology Fund (TETF).

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(Phys.org) —Excess carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere created by the widespread burning of fossil fuels is the major driving force of global climate change, and researchers the world over are looking for new ways to generate power that leaves...

Now, researchers at the University of Georgia have found a way to transform the carbon dioxide trapped in the atmosphere into useful industrial products. Their discovery may soon lead to the creation of biofuels made directly from the carbon dioxide in the air that is responsible for trapping the sun's rays and raising global temperatures.

US researchers have unveiled a new compound which could reduce the number of materials used in solar cells. () Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania and Drexel University have demonstrated a new material that can both capture photons from visible light and get current to flow, paving the way for cheaper, more efficient solar PV cells.

Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania and Drexel University have demonstrated a new material that can both capture photons from visible light and get current to flow, paving the way for cheaper, more efficient solar PV cells.

Conventional solar panels are based around the interface of two materials: one which absorbs light and excites electrons, and one which causes them to flow in a consistent direction, producing an electric current. The interface which the excited electrons pass through is called the semiconductor p-n junction. Once an electron has crossed over, it cannot return the other way, thus creating the necessary flow.

However, some of the energy from photons is lost while electrons wait to make the jump through the junction. There’s even a name for the maximum theoretical efficiency of cells that use p-n junctions: the Shockley-Queisser limit. Multi-junction cells are able to overcome it, but this increases the complexity of the solar cell structure, which has a knock-on effect for production costs.

A small category of materials are able to send electrons off in a particular direction independently, without a junction; this is known as the ‘bulk’ photovoltaic effect rather than ‘interface’. The phenomenon has been known about since the 1970s but has previously only been shown to work with UV light. As most of the energy from the sun is in the visible and infrared spectrum, it hasn’t therefore been utilised for conventional solar cells.

A new material compound has been shown to generate the flow of electrons without a junction across a much wider spectrum of light. The compound created by the US researchers is a combination of a ‘parent’ material, potassium niobate, that lends it a bulk photovoltaic effect and a secondary one, barium nickel niobate, that lowers the threshold at which photons are absorbed, allowing it to capture more rays. The two materials are ground into fine powders, mixed and heated in an oven to create a ‘perovskite’ crystal that has the properties of both. The researchers fine-tuned the ratios involved until they hit upon the ideal combination.

“A solar cell based on the discovery could double power conversion efficiencies possible with conventional solar cells, theoretically”, says Professor Andrew Rappe at the University of Pennsylvania. It could also help to reduce the amount of materials used in a solar cell, and as perovskites are easier to process than silicon, make them more cost-effective too. The next step, Rappe says, is to create a full-scale solar cell that uses the modified perovskite, which should happen within two years.

While the mainstream media continues to push the idea that we are facing an energy crisis due to a lack of resources, more people are actually looking into alternative energy and discovering that there really is no energy crisis at at all.

With many developing nations rapidly industrialising, dependent on fossil fuels as their energy mainstay, CO2 concentrations show no signs of abating. What will the ramifications be for food production and health moving forward in to the 21st century if weather patterns become even more hostile than the previous decade?

Fortunately, scientists and engineers are working on ways to neutralise emissions in to, or actively reduce the carbon content of the atmosphere until the time arises when we can transition to cleaner energy solutions. In the interim phase we find ourselves however, there are no perfect solutions, but there are technologies and techniques that can help combat the climate catastrophe that will be unleashed if CO2 concentrations continue to rise unchecked. Here a four such technologies…

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